Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Top Ten Books for People Who Have Never (Or want to ) Read Creepy/Dark Ya

Top
Ten Books for People Who Have Never Read Creepy/Dark Ya

Top
Ten Tuesday is a great meme by the lovely http://www.brokeandbookish.com/.
This week we are focusing on your top ten for people who have never (insert
here). I have chosen people who do not read creepy YA. I love a good scary story, but don’t always
want the gore that goes into normal fiction. So it has become a goal to find
creepy tales in YA. So this list is for those of you who tend to stay towards
the light hearted YA novels but would like to read something darker.

1
I hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

Jazz
is a likable teenager. A charmer, some might say.

But
he's also the son of the world's most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old
Dad, "Take Your Son to Work Day" was year-round. Jazz has witnessed
crime scenes the way cops wish they could--from the criminals' point of view.

And
now, even though Dad has been in jail for years, bodies are piling up in the
sleepy town of Lobo's Nod. Again.

In
an effort to prove murder doesn't run in the family, Jazz joins the police in
the hunt for this new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret--could he be more
like his father than anyone knows?

2) The
Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

In Mary's world
there are simple truths.
The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that
protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.
But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never
wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and
their power. And, when the fence is breached and her world is thrown into
chaos, about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.
Now, she must choose between her village and her future, between the one she
loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest
of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much
death?

3) Insanity by Susan Vaught

Never, Kentucky is
not your average scenic small town. It is a crossways, a place where the dead
and the living can find no peace. Not that Forest, an 18-year-old foster kid
who works the graveyard shift at Lincoln Hospital, knew this when she applied
for the job. Lincoln is a huge state mental institution, a good place for
Forest to make some money to pay for college. But along with hundreds of very
unstable patients, it also has underground tunnels, bell towers that ring
unexpectedly, and a closet that holds more than just donated clothing....When
the dead husband of one of Forest's patients makes an appearance late one
night, seemingly accompanied by an agent of the Devil, Forest loses all sense
of reality and all sense of time. Terrified, she knows she has a part to play,
and when she does so, she finds a heritage that she never expected.

4) Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong

Twin sisters Moria and Ashyn were marked at birth to
become the Keeper and the Seeker of Edgewood, beginning with their sixteenth
birthday. Trained in fighting and in the secret rites of the spirits, they lead
an annual trip into the Forest of the Dead. There, the veil between the living
world and the beyond is thinnest, and the girls pay respect to the spirits who
have passed.

But
this year, their trip goes dreadfully wrong.

5) The
Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place—he's
the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts,
werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs
of his guardians' time as well as their ghostly teachings—such as the ability
to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.

Can
a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living
and the dead? And then there are being such as ghouls that aren't really one
thing or the other.

6)
The Blood Confession by Alisa Libby

Born under the omen of a falling star, Erzebet Bizecka is a
child of prophecy. The only heir of a powerful Hungarian count, she was
predicted to die young or to live forever. Determined to survive despite the
grim prophecy, Erzebet becomes obsessed with preserving her youth and beauty.
Not even her closest friend, Marianna, can understand her crippling fear of
growing older. Only the beautiful stranger, Sinestra, understands Erzebet's
mania. He assures her that there are ways to determine her own destiny, pulling
her into a dark world of blood rituals and promising eternal youth in return.
Luring her victims to her tower room, Erzebet is determined to thwart God's
plan for her life and create her own. How far will she be willing to go to
protect herself?

7)Anna Dressed
in Blood by Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the
dead.

So did his father
before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now,
armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country
with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends
and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the
future and friends at bay.

Searching for a
ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track,
hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a
ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the
day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with
blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to
step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

8)The Space
Between by Brenna Yovanoff

Everything is made of steel, even the flowers. How can you
love anything in a place like this?

Daphne is the
half-demon, half-fallen angel daughter of Lucifer and Lilith. Life for her is
an endless expanse of time, until her brother Obie is kidnapped - and Daphne
realizes she may be partially responsible. Determined to find him, Daphne
travels from her home in Pandemonium to the vast streets of Earth, where
everything is colder and more terrifying. With the help of the human boy she
believes was the last person to see her brother alive, Daphne glimpses into his
dreams, discovering clues to Obie's whereabouts. As she delves deeper into her
demonic powers, she must navigate the jealousies and alliances of the violent
archangels who stand in her way. But she also discovers, unexpectedly, what it
means to love and be human in a world where human is the hardest thing to be

9) Bad Girls Don’t
Die by Katie Alender

Alexis thought she led a typically dysfunctional high school
existence. Dysfunctional like her parents' marriage; her doll-crazy
twelve-year-old sister, Kasey; and even her own anti-social, anti-cheerleader
attitude. When a family fight results in some tearful sisterly bonding, Alexis
realizes that her life is creeping from dysfunction into danger. Kasey is
acting stranger than ever: her blue eyes go green sometimes; she uses
old-fashioned language; and she even loses track of chunks of time, claiming to
know nothing about her strange behavior. Their old house is changing, too.
Doors open and close by themselves; water boils on the unlit stove; and an
unplugged air conditioner turns the house cold enough to see their breath in.

Alexis wants to
think that it's all in her head, but soon, what she liked to think of as silly
parlor tricks are becoming life-threatening--to her, her family, and to her
budding relationship with the class president. Alexis knows she's the only
person who can stop Kasey -- but what if that green-eyed girl isn't even Kasey
anymore?

10) The
Crooked House by John A.
Longeway

A psychic reading gone awry. Dreams that hold terrifying
glimpses of the future. A dark and foreboding house that defies description.
Something terrible is coming to the gothic, southern Oregon town of Linkville.

Psychic orphan
Lilith St. John has recently left the foster system and is struggling to make
it on her own. But now her dreams are filled with terror. And she feels
something in the shadows, watching.

When a psychic
reading draws the attention of dark forces, Lilith finds herself stalked and
terrorized by an otherworldly menace. With few resources and fewer friends,
Lilith can do little to protect herself as supernatural terror spreads into her
life, culminating in a brutal attack.

Lilith awakens in
The Crooked House, a ramshackle maze of shattered dreams and tortured souls
ruled over by a hidden, malevolent force. Trapped in the mystifying labyrinth,
Lilith is hunted by the terrible creatures that roam the night while hiding
from the nameless monster upstairs. Can Lilith master her psychic powers and
solve the mystery of The Crooked House or will she be trapped wandering its
haunted corridors for eternity?

I love me a good dark and creepy book. I really like I Hunt Killers and actually have Game on my bedside table, waiting. Neil Gaiman is of course always brilliant. I've read a couple more on your list and a couple more I haven't heard of before, so I'm adding them to the TBR list now.